O Caroline

The album credit is Sinclair and Wyatt, with Sinclair on music and Wyatt on lyrics per Wikipedia and Background Magazine; a Shindig piece says the music was by both. It opens the album at 5:05 and was released as a single in 1972, in a 3:33 version. Toppermost calls it a love song to the artist and activist Caroline Coon, and Wikipedia gives Coon as the subject. Shindig in December 2017 says Wyatt heard Sinclair's tune while the two swapped ideas early in the band and asked to write the lyrics, that Sinclair had left Caravan and Wyatt coaxed him back with a telegram, and that Wyatt calls the song totally metaphorical, like looking at an old tattoo, adding that with Soft Machine in place of Caroline it reads as a letter to his old band.

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci covered it on Tatay (Ankst, 1994), as did Horse Latitudes and the Orchestra National de Jazz, and Spencer Cullum with Hollow Hand released a version in 2024. Background Magazine calls it their best-known song. We found no chart entry, video or samples, and the setlist.fm entry for Matching Mole is a different act.